In this bold, clarifying examination, Walter Russell Mead demolishes the myths that have misled Zionists and anti-Zionists over the years while showing just how special the connection between the United States, Israel, and the Jewish people has become. Citing examples from the earliest pilgrims to Gilded Age titans like J. P. Morgan and John D. Rockefeller to the present day, Mead shows how both mainline and Evangelical Protestant Christians maintained that Zionism was as American as apple pie. With original analysis and lively prose, Mead illuminates the place of Israel in American foreign policy, investigates the changing politics around the U.S.-Israel relationship, and unlocks the connection between that relationship and the upheavals reshaping American life.